Drabbles
by APAccidentalAccount
Summary: Just drabbles. Things I write for shits n' giggles at three AM or things too short to stand alone, they go here. I have the most original titles. /sarcasm
1. Hangman

**AN: This'll be where I put the stupid shit I find hilarious at three in the morning and jot down. Or the stuff so short it doesn't warrant its own publication. Remember to review, people. Also, I'm working on a series of Autumn AU prompts. As soon as my beta (the lovely CT230R) helps me hammer it into shape, the first one will go up. **

**Obligatory**** disclaimer: I own nothing TLOU. **

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"Geez," Ellie muttered, slowing and looking up at the body hanging by his neck between thick branches. "Guess he made a _noose-_ance of himself."

She'd only really meant for Joel to hear her, but the rest of the hunting party stopped and turned, varying degrees of suppressed amusement and bewilderment on their faces. Tommy looked torn between the two, struggling not to laugh at the absurdity.

"Knot funny?" The pun slipped out before she could stop it, and then she couldn't stop. _"He_ might be at the end of his rope, but that doesn't mean you guys have to be. It's just a joke; don't get so hung up on it."

Three of the four men she didn't know burst out laughing, Tommy joining them. Joel coughed into his hand, and the fourth man stared at her like she'd sprouted horns and a forked tail.


	2. Suburban Life in Post-Apocolyptia

**AN: Hey, two at once! I actually have quite a few of these, but some need to be polished. *cough*IswearI'mworkingonSummerSucksCT*cough***

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"Okay," Joel said, crouching beside her behind the dilapidated police car. "I'm gonna circle 'round through those houses an' come up behind 'em."

Ellie peered through the empty window of the husk and started counting how many hunters there were down the street. _Three…Eight…Fifteen…Shit. Too many._ Dread curled in her gut and she remembered their close calls in Pittsburgh.

She shot Joel a look. "You'll just get your ass shot." There. Nice and blunt. She's totally not worried about him because she cares. Nope. Ellie just needs him to get to the Firefly base. That's it. Means to an end.

Joel rolled his eyes and passed her his rifle. "That's why you'll be makin' a ruckus. You keep 'em busy long enough for me to get around an' we'll catch 'em in the crossfire. They'll go down like dominoes."

Ellie cradled the rifle and snorted. "It might work. I have it on good authority I'm half-decent at driving people crazy. Maybe I'll whistle and their heads will explode."

He raised his eyebrows at her and shifted to the balls of his feet, getting ready to make a dash for the houses to their right. "No need to get nasty. You ready?"

She nodded sharply, resting the barrel of the rifle on the edge of the window. Joel ran and Ellie dropped the hunter nearest to him before he could raise the alarm.

"Hey motherfuckers! You gonna stand there nice and pretty while I line up my shots or are you going to make this interesting?" she shouted. A few curses and bullets whizzed her way, most of them pinging off the car or lodging themselves in the brick wall behind her. She killed two more advancing down the street toward her, then dropped down to reload.

"Is that it?" Ellie challenged, her hands shaking slightly from adrenaline as she slid in three more bullets. "Really? You fucking pussies! What's a girl gotta do to get into a decent gunfight these days?"

She put a bullet in a man rounding the hood of the car with a baseball bat, then stood and put another in a hunter not three yards away. Three more rushed forward to take their places. _Keep the hunters busy. Mission _fucking_ accomplished._ What the hell was taking Joel so long? Whatever. She needed some breathing room. Ellie spent the last bullet in her rifle on taking the eye of the guy in the middle, but then there were four more bearing down on her.

_Thank god these assholes can't aim for shit._

She slung off her backpack and fumbled through it for the spare nail bombs Joel had given her. Ellie cut her finger on one of the blades sticking out of the can, seized it, dented it on the car to arm the explosive, then hurled it at the group of men and dropped to the ground.

There was thunk and a half-startled-half-pained scream when the blades on the can sunk into flesh, then an explosion like a cannon shot. Ellie scuttled to the end of the car and peered over the hood. Two thoroughly mangled corpses with a fine red mist settling over them, one half-mangled guy groaning incoherently and seconds from bleeding out, two mildly maimed hunters picking themselves up off the bloodied asphalt, and one really pissed off dude covered in his buddies' bodily fluids and gray matter. Pissed off dude also had a shotgun. _Great. _

Ellie ducked and the pellets skittered across the pockmarked hood. She popped up while he was reloading and shot one of the maimed hunters twice with her pistol. "Nice shot, cockmunch! Wanna try hitting me this time?"

Shotgun dude yelled something that may have been, "You killed Jerry, bitch!" but came out sounding more like, "Vou billed hairy, biv!" She assumed that nasty knot above his eye rapidly swelling to the size of an egg and purpling was the cause of his garbled speech. He raised the double-barrel, swayed, and went down like a sack of shit.

Gunfire erupted from the opposite end of the street and the other mildly maimed hunter was finally getting his feet under him. Ellie finished him with a clean shot to the head. She looked down the street and saw a clustered group of three go up in flames. Molotov. Well, she couldn't say Joel didn't know how to party, even if he showed up a bit late.

Ellie swiped up the rifle, adjust the distance on the scope, and loaded three more shots. She let a few men get close to Joel—he wasn't exactly a slouch in close-combat—and instead combed rooftops and high windows for snipers. She got the two she could find, then dropped a man coming up behind Joel. He finished beating the head in of the guy he was currently engaging, then straightened, panting. The street was quiet.

Joel waved to her, signalling the all clear. When Ellie got to him, he gave her an expression of wry amusement and held out his hand for the rifle, which she reluctantly parted with. "Cockmunch?"

Ellie shrugged. "I'm classy like that."


	3. First Kill

**AN: This is actually the very first thing I ever wrote for this fandom.**

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_Shitshitshitshit_

The inner mantra matched her hurried footsteps as she struggled against running flat out for the sake of being quiet. That asshole was taking entirely too long and—icing on the _fucking_ cake—Ellie heard distant pops of gunfire below her. If Joel had gotten himself hurt, or killed, or infected, she'd…Ellie paused at the foot of a staircase, flattening herself against the wall and holding her breath, hoping the shadows would be enough to conceal her while the heavy footfalls grew closer. The hunter stopped in the doorway, casting a half-hearted glance up the stairs before grunting to himself and walking back the way he came. Ellie let her breath out slowly, but didn't leave her spot until his footsteps receded completely.

Cautiously, she edged out into the hallway, glancing up and down its length. A glimpse of a blue windbreaker to her right—_who the fuck wears a windbreaker in the middle of summer? I'm dying in my black thermal_—and a handy sign pointing out another down staircase to her left. No fucking contest. Ellie turned left and half-ran to the relative safety of the stairwell, starting to take the steps two at a time, but slowing down when her foot slipped and she almost took the fastest way down. Her thoughts turned back to her inner tirade.

She'd…what? Snark at his corpse? Sack up and set off on her own? No, Joel can't be _any _of the above. He can't, because she needs him. Frankly, that scared her shitless. Riley's grin flashed behind her eyes and Ellie gritted her teeth. _No. Not now. I_ _need to focus. It won't end up like that. It can't. I'd die first._

That thought scared her, too.

* * *

She hears the splash of water, grunts of exertion, and strangled gasps she recognizes from when Joel wakes up and suddenly she's running. Ellie leaps from the scaffolding edge, realizing at the last second this is a bad idea and landing is probably going to hurt like a bitch. Of course it does. A stab of pain shoots up her leg from her ankle, but there's no time because the hunter is looking up at her and he's shocked for now but Joel is still underwater and why can't she _fucking move already_ because his surprise is wearing off—

Ellie spoted a gleam of silver in the water and lunged for it. The weight of the pistol in her hand was familiar as she drew it up, her left hand automatically coming up to support the gun so the kick doesn't damage her wrist, just like they drilled her at school. The shock in the man's face briefly shifted to fear and he reached for something behind him, but the gun comes up, smooth and easy and she fired.

In the moment the hunter fell and Joel broke the surface of the water, turning to look at her, the only thing she could numbly think of was that shooting a paper cutout and shooting an actual person were very, very different. Cutouts didn't bleed. They didn't jerk for a few seconds before their bodies caught up to the fact that they were dead. They didn't gurgle out a last breath, or stare accusingly with blank eyes.

When it became clear Joel was waiting for something, Ellie let go of a nervous breath and her arms fell to her sides.

"Man, I shot the hell outta that guy, huh?"

"Yeah, you sure did." Joel's expression shifted to something neutral as he gained his feet, and her eyes were drawn back to the body. Suddenly her stomach decided it didn't like her anymore and lurched sideways as if it was trying to sidle right out of her abdomen.

"I feel sick," she muttered, all but collapsing onto a nearby crate with her wrists balanced on her knees. Joel had been looking at him—it. It wasn't a person anymore 'cause she killed him—but when he turned back to her he was pissed.

Again.

"Why didn't you just hang back like I told you to?" he demanded, snatching the gun out of her loose grip before retreating a few steps with a quiet huff. _What—?_

"Well you're glad I didn't, right?" It was a rhetorical question and she wished he would stop talking so she could concentrate on not puking her guts out. Naturally, the rhetoric flew right over his head and Joel gave a bitter little huff that could generously be called a laugh.

"I'm glad I didn't get my head blown off by a goddamn kid." Oh, fuck that. She just saved his ass and he was sitting there acting like he had had the situation well in hand. The stab of anger drowned out the nausea and she pushed herself violently off the crate.

"You know what? No." His head snapped up to look at her, impatience and annoyance written clearly in the lines of his face. "How about, 'hey Ellie, I know it wasn't easy, but it was either him or me; thanks for saving my ass?' You got anything like that for me, Joel?"

That was a lie. It _was_ easy. All too easy. She clamped her mouth shut when her stomach lurched again and she knew exactly what her nightmares would be like that night.

For a second, Joel's features softened marginally and he looked conflicted. Then the scowl was back in place and he shook his head, walking past her, mumbling a gruff, "We gotta get going."

"Lead the way." _Asshole._


	4. Summer Sucks

**AN: Deliverance for my awesome beta, CT230R, who demanded I put this piece up. Originally posted on Luciferine's blog in August. I love me some reviews, people. Also, special thanks to the guest who pointed out a typo in the previous chapter. **

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"Okay, this is dull as hell," Ellie declared, slinging off her backpack and pulling out a small, brightly colored book. This garnered her a few curious looks from the other people—guards, mostly—standing around while waiting for the turbine to get up and running again. She didn't actually _have_ to be there, but the last time Joel went alone he came back pissy and wouldn't sing for her. So she tagged along, expecting Joel to have just been a drama queen about having nothing to do but watch grass grow. He was right. They'd been at the dam since dawn and there was just about as many interesting things to be found as there were in her _bellybutton._ Not to mention it was hotter than the devil's asshole and the air was eighty percent water, just to make things worse, causing her thermal to stick to her skin with sweat.

Joel groaned melodramatically beside her. "Now? Does it have to be now?"

Ellie stuck her tongue out at him and did her best to ignore the pounding headache in her temples. "You're glaring at people and it's scaring them. Shut up and listen to my jokes."

He sighed and leaned against the wall, absently swiping sweat out of his eyes. "Alright, alright. I'm listenin'."

"I don't trust these stairs, because they're always up to something."

Joel huffed and shook his head. "That's terrible."

"You're terrible." She grinned and her eyes dropped back to the book, ignoring the way sweat was rapidly collecting on her palms without her wiping them on her jeans every few seconds. "I read a book about a bean growing up in Southern USA. It's called The Adventures of Tom Soya."

He snorted a laugh. "Do you even get that?"

"Yes, I do, actually. I have read Tom Sawyer, believe it or not." She blinked and squinted at the pages, which were suddenly very bright and the words blurry.

"What's the best way to serve a stack of pancakes?" Ellie finally asked, almost stumbling over the words. A small part of her mind was starting to pop warning flags.

Joel rolled his eyes and let her sit for a while. When she started glaring at him, he hid a smile and prompted in as bored a voice he could muster, "What _is_ the best way to serve a stack of pancakes?"

"Syurpstitiously." Ellie felt a stab of triumph when he chuckled, her eyes flicking down to the next joke, which was more of a blurry mess than the last. She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her thermal.

"A plumber's pipe dream is to tap all of his resources and become multifauceted." A startled laugh to her right made Ellie nearly jump out of her skin. The guard gave her a sheepish smile and she noticed that she and Joel were almost completely surrounded. Either she was losing her edge or the heat was fucking with her head. Ellie wasn't sure which prospect was worse. For a second, she stood stock still with a deer in the headlights expression. Why were they all looking at her, again? Right. Joke book. Which was really heavy all of a sudden.

A warm hand landed on her shoulder and she had to lock her legs to keep her knees from giving out. "Ellie? Are you okay?"

She tried to respond, she really did, but all that came out was a garbled slur and she pitched forward, barely aware of being caught before hitting the metal catwalk. There was the sensation of being lifted and Ellie felt more than heard Joel yell at people to move. Then there was black.

* * *

"Ellie! Ellie!" _Fuuuuck. Did someone take a fucking sledgehammer to my head?_

"Dammit, Joel! If you don't stop hovering I can't help her!"

A blessedly cool rag pressed against her forehead, and another was spread over her throat. A few more cool rags joined them on her wrists and inner elbows and—Ellie's mind screeched to a halt. She wasn't wearing her undershirt. Another rag was laid across her stomach. Holy _shit,_ she wasn't wearing a _shirt!_

Her eyes shot open and she managed to get halfway to a sitting position before small but strong hands were pushing her back down. "Easy, Ellie. It's just us. It's okay."

Ellie blinked once. Twice. Three times, and finally registered the blonde hair and weathered features of Maria. Standing behind her, looking very much like a mother hen and practically wringing his hands, was Joel. It would have been hilarious in any other situation.

"Ellie?" His voice was hard and tense, but with the slight rasp that reminded her of stone grating on stone that meant he was seconds from falling apart. Ellie smiled, hoping to reassure him since her throat felt like she swallowed a desert. His frown just deepened.

"Water?" she croaked. At least her head wasn't foggy anymore. _Hooray cold compresses!_ Joel turned and snatched the water bottle from the table behind him and passed it to her. Ellie took a swing from it, the water heaven on her dry throat.

"Slowly," Maria cautioned, to which Ellie waved off.

"I know. Heat exhaustion, right?" she asked, sounding more like a person and less like a toad. True to form now that immediate danger had passed, Joel's worry was replaced by anger. _Here we go again._

"Why the hell didn't you say anythin'?" Ellie sighed and took another sip from the bottle.

"I dunno, maybe because my head was already fuzzy and putting a thought together was hard?" she shot back sarcastically. "Fuck, Joel. I didn't realize it at the time, okay?"

Just like that, the anger was gone and he was shaking his head, running his fingers through his graying hair. "I'm not angry at you, Ellie. Just…"

"Joel. I know. I'll be more careful."

"And you'll tell me if you're gettin' too hot before you can't put a thought together, okay?" His face was stern, but it was the soft, chiding, stern. Ellie smiled.

"Okay."


	5. Get Out of Here, S T A L K E R

**AN: A poem attempted in the style of Shel Silverstien, just to mix things up. Cookie to whoever gets the reference in the chapter title. **

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Up the stairs, they wait in pairs,

Watching for a meal.

If the spores don't Turn them first,

The Stalkers feast with zeal.


End file.
